Akane Shumizu’s Cells at Work is the latest manga to get the live-action treatment. The hit series was released in 2015 and serialized for six years. In 2018, it received an anime adaptation that aired for two seasons and was also very popular. Fans thought that would be the end, until it was announced that a live-action movie was in development by Warner Bros. Japan.
A year after that announcement, some news has finally come out about the Cells at Work live-action movie. Specifically, a trailer and release date were announced, revealing the cast and giving us a first glimpse at the movie.
Cells at Work release window and trailer
Warner Bros. Japan announced that a live-action adaptation of Cells at Work was in production in March 2023. The first teaser trailer for the film was finally released in June 2024, and featured a similar narration to that in the anime, introducing viewers to the human body and the world that the cells live in. Furthermore, it gave an introduction to both the Red Blood Cell and White Blood Cell, showing Red as she swore her oath of service, and White as he brutally took down some harmful bacteria. Thankfully, we won’t have to wait too long, as the movie was given a release window of December, 2024.
The cast, crew, and plot
Set inside a human body filled with trillions of anthropomorphic cells, the manga follows a rookie red blood cell. While she is still new at the job, she encounters a white blood cell. She can be clumsy sometimes and has a bad sense of direction, but she is determined to do her job of delivering oxygen and nutrients around the body well. The white blood cell on the other hand is very competent at his job of killing all kinds of pathogens that attack the body. He is surprisingly gentle despite his violent job, and the two develop a friendship while interacting with the other cells at work in the body. Both blood cells encounter different challenges throughout the story, both due to difficulties of their jobs and from conflicts with other cells.
The Cells at Work live-action stars Mei Nagano as the rookie Red Blood Cell, and Takeru Sato as the soft-spoken White Blood Cell. Direction credits belong to the incomparable Hideaki Takeuchi, Yuichi Tokunaga is the brain behind the script. If those names sound familiar, it’s because they both worked together on 2019’s Fly Me to the Saitama.
Both the Cells at Work manga and anime gave fans a new perspective on just how much work the cells in our bodies are doing constantly. The live-action, which dubbed itself a “huge scale drama on the tiniest stage” in the trailer, has huge shoes to fill in adapting this ambitious story.
